User blog:Kirbyddd/In the CITY Newsletter 01 ~ Summer 2017
Greetings, CITY '''Wiki editors (so just Masternachos and Okaminarutofan999 if you happen to visit), this is the wiki's first ''In the CITY Newsletter'!'' I'll be posting this on months where significant progress is madeon the wiki or whenever enough new stuff has happens in the manga that I can write a full article about it, both of which will probably be a month or two after a new volume is released. Since the story hasn't really picked up in the chapters available to the west, this issue is more of a wiki progress report with me rambling about our new articles and making stupid jokes. Actually, that's pretty much everything I ever post, so I guess this won't be much different. Without further ado... This Month's Progress ''Editor's Note: This section (and most of the other sections for that matter) was written in June 2017. New progress has been made since it was written, but everything in this section is still accurate. A "September Update" section has been added, detailing the progress not mentioned here. Summary This past month the wiki has taken huge steps towards being a functional encyclopedia. Not only has the top navigation has been finalized, its working links now outnumber its dead ones! Second, nearly every major character has a working page with an adequate amount of information it it. The only outliers are Obaba, Ecchan, and Sakurai (who I am holding off on until I can confirm that his name is correct). Editor's Note: These pages now exist. Details in the next section. The top navigation now features sections for students and the MOB! The MOB page obviously lists the original MOB (described in the New Pages section), while Students currently lists the named classmates of Tatewaku and Matsuri. If CITY grows to include several college students we will see about making modifications, at least separating the Students Category into College and Grade School. Otherwise we can afford to fit a few college students under Other Citizens. Speaking of which, best boy Toudou finally joins the ranks of the CITY Wiki's major citizens! I invite all of you to check out his page! September Update This newsletter was originally planned to be released at the end of June. However, due to my slow progress on the "Road Ahead" section, the date was continually pushed back until September. Only minor progress was made during the intervening months, so the original progress report still covered everything... Until now. I've been spending this second week of September making basic pages for minor characters and new locations that are hard to get info on. This has eliminated nearly all red links from the wiki, now making the place fully navigable. I had been putting it off until I had more concrete information on the characters, so as to make the pages somewhat functional as articles, but in the end I decided that wiki navigability was more important right now, since we're not even in the article writing phase yet. Because of this, most of the new pages are very bare-bones, in most cases only containing a basic description of the character or location.* There are a few exceptions to this. Obaba finally got her own basic article, and Mrs. Makabe and the individual MOB characters have some interesting info. I also finally made pages for Hajime Sakurai and the Kamaboko Oni, two of the most important minor characters. These new pages, though small, have finally linked the entire wiki together, allowing us to move into its next phase of development. Every link in the top navigation is now functional, which means the basic functions of the wiki are now all working properly. The "Road Ahead" section of this newsletter will detail what we need to work on next. In the meantime, check out our new character pages and meet some of CITY's lesser known cast! In addition to this, I have another announcement. CITY is coming West! In an obscure July press release, Vertical Comics announced the English translation will be released next March! I'll also add here, this past July the Nichijou-CITY Wiki community gained a new member! Welcome 11equalsfish! *Note: Due to the sheer volume of the new pages, and the fact that its simply not possible to expand the majority of them at the moment, I haven't bothered marking them all as stubs. As the wiki finally moves into the article writing phase, stub templates will be added where necessary. New Pages Editor's Note: This section doesn't list every new page created, it's more of a showcase for new articles that have enough information to be interesting. MOB .]]The MOB page is finally up! This article will introduce you to Arawi Keiichi's greatest creation yet. The MOB is definitely CITY's most unique group so far and I highly recommend seeing what they're about, if only to meet your newly adopted son, NEW MOB. The MOB page also made a bit of Nichijou history this month, being the first page in the duo of Arawi Keiichi wikis to feature a fully written Parody Breakdown. As many of you know, the basic designs of nearly every character in Nichijou are parodies of common Japanese tropes, but the Nichijou Wiki rarely mentions this. It's been a small goal of mine to write a small section ffor each character detailing their trope and their inversions of it, but it seems that CITY was the first series to recieve that treatment. While CITY houses many less parody driven characters than Nichijou, Arawi still hasn't given up his passion for satire, seeing as CITY's MOB is possibly the best parody he's ever created, not only being a joke but an actual criticizm of the モブ trope. If you are interested in learning more, the full breakdown is on the MOB page. As for the future of this page, it's unclear whether or not the characters in the original MOB are going to continue to be associated with each other or if it was a one time joke and they'll gradually assimilate into the Student and Citizen categories, but NEW MOB '''seems to be a good indicator that the MOB moniker will remain relevant well into the series' run. I kind of hope Arawi will start introducing minor characters as MOBs and make it a running joke... The Mont Blanc Trio The '''Mont Blanc Trio page is a unique page in that it compiles information you can't read about anywhere else! As CITY's story progresses, a trio of three characters eventually comes together, and although they actually initially have less "screentime" so to speak than most other characters (appearing only slightly more often than the Mangaka), they are set to act as the central protagonists of CITY once the central story arc takes shape. Until now, the relationship between Nagumo, Niikura, and Izumi has not seen much light in CITY's western fandom (composed of like three people excluding myself) due to their stories not coming together until later chapters which take a while to reach the west. The Mont Blanc Trio page will act as a portal to articles for the main protagonists as well as various articles on the story. It will likely become one of the most important pages on the wiki, acting as a central discussion hub for many CITY related topics. The page has three sections: A short introduction to the trio; basic character bios for each member (more in depth info such as relationships and specific storylines will be detailed in each character's personal article); and a section discussing the trio's interesting development history (written by me based on information translated by numahachi ). Conclusion While the first half of the year was spent laying the groundwork for the wiki in intense one week editing sessions every month or so, June has been the most productive month yet in terms of actual informational content. While there is still an extremely long road ahead, the CITY Wiki has taken huge strides in becoming a readable encyclopedia, and at this point someone who has never heard of CITY could come here, read the articles we do have, and get a good understanding of the main characters and what the manga is about. Although most of the obstacles we deal with and accomplishments we make are things all wikis face, the fact that someone can come here and easily gain an understanding of our topic means we have already surpassed the barrier that 70% of wikis run into. In my experience, most young wikis get perpetually stuck in early development with a handful of stub pages, never able to lift off the ground and become a real resource, usually due to a lack of people with the ability to write detailed and readable articles. Having a few complete articles puts us well on the path to being a fully functional wiki, and the elimination of red links has brought us even further. This Newsletter This newsletter initially started as a detailed progress report for June (this issue pretty much still is), which I decided to write because of the sudden rise in readable wiki content on account of my coming across a few people who were reading the Japanese release of CITY and posting key info I was missing. Pretty soon after starting I decided it would be cool to write the report the same way I write articles, making it interesting (I use that word loosely) to read and letting it act as a central page for dicussion of recent happenings in the wiki and manga. The wiki is completely desolate in terms of community right now, but as the manga continues and eventually gets translated I'm expecting its small fandom to quickly surface, as I know there are various Nichijou communities across the internet who are very excited for it. While it's unlikely to attract the attention of anyone any time soon, I'm writing the newsletter to act as a gathering point for people to discuss CITY while being able to directly access new articles on the wiki to get the latest info from the manga. As we get closer to CITY's western release, I'm going to drop a few links to the wiki around the internet , but I'm not counting on anyone showing up until CITY starts really picking up steam, and at that point I expect just a handful of people, as wikis are generally not known for their community aspect. In the mean time, occasionally writing a long article like this will keep my writing skills in shape, so I'm not complaining. The format of the newsletter might go through a few changes over time. I want to eventually have a few major sections: Wiki Progress Report, Recent Story Developements (absent from this issue due to the lack of any real story so far), and New Articles (new pages with lots of new info). I also want to have a featured article each month, and a loose plan for work to be done on the wiki before the next issue. At the end I will also include links to new pages that don't have enough content to qualify for their own segment, as well as other pages that need work. This issue won't be as well organized as the following ones due obvious circumstances, what with me having to explain it and the lack of any story to cover. I expect to have enough info for another issue within a few months, possibly within the year if I'm able to find new info (Volume 3 comes out in Japan on September 22nd). If not, we may well have to wait until the official translation, but I don't think it will come to that as I am planning to conact someone who has been reading the Japanese release as it is serialized and see if they'll answer questions I have. Anyways, like I said this newsletter is more of an excersise than anything else right now, so don't bother concerning yourself with its future, not that anyone was going to... The Road Ahead This part was originally going to focus on removing red links and all the pages that needed to be created to do that, but now that that's been taken care of, we can look ahead. Now that the wiki is all interconnected, we can start to focus on the big picture. The two big things to focus on next are Design and Required Pages (I don't know if there is an actual term for them). I want to work on the design a bit more, but there's not much more that can be done without getting into more complex stuff. The front page definitely needs an upgrade, but I'm still waiting for the manga to progress a bit, so we can determine what would be the best introduction to CITY. The background could also use an upgrade, but the current one is pretty decent, so it's not a priority. I want to eventually look into some backend stuff, but that would require taking a couple of days to learn css, which I can't really do right now. Regardless, functionality and content are the most important parts of a wiki, so design isn't the most important thing to address right now. The more pressing matter is Required Pages (I don't know if there's an official term for these). Things like wiki rules, introductions for new editors, and pages to access special information. No one ever uses these pages, but they're required for a wiki to be considered "user friendly" on wikia, or something like that. Most of it is pretty boring, searching through Community Central for default pages I've never heard of and filling them out. Luckily, since most of the pages are very similar across wikis, most of it is copying and pasting, although I'll probably have to rewrite certain sections. Most of this can be taken care of quickly, and it'll serve to legitimize us as an active and orderly wiki. Since wikia's default tutorials for new users are pretty lengthy and technical, I also want to write a unique Welcome Page for the CITY Wiki, that gives new users an introduction to wiki editing and some of the CITY Wiki's more specific ways of doing things (such as writing characters' given names as their "first names," and cross-linking between the CITY and Nichijou Wikis). Depending on how much new information I'm able to get by talking to people who have read the Japanese release, we may be able to write some new articles. While the possibility of new info is exciting, it is more likely we will have to wait until March before we can really start writing. Tenkawa Times Classifieds Before we wrap up, I'm adding this as a side note, since I can't fit it in anywhere else: In addition to this newsletter, I've used the Community Corner page to create a simpler list of announcements and to-do lists that can be updated more frequently. To see it, go to Wiki Activity, then scroll down a bit. You will see a box on the right hand side of the page called the "Tenkawa Times Classifieds." This will list recent developments in the wiki's progress, as well as some ways you can contribute immediately (Job Offers). This is meant for users who don't edit frequently, or have taken a break and need to get up to speed on what's happened in the wiki. In keeping with the Wiki's theme, I've made it kind of like a newspaper clipping. And that brings us to the end of this issue. Thank you all for reading the CITY '''Wiki's first ''In the CITY Newsletter'!'' It's been a long ride for me, writing this issue one chunk at a time over the course of four months, all to see it published to zero fanfare, but it had to be done. This newsletter is itself another major milestone for this wiki, representing the dedication of this community. (What other 4 person community would put out a 3000 word newsletter?!) Below this is our first Featured Article, and the complete list of all new articles. Since the wiki is very young, and this is our first newsletter, I'll include all articles currently on the wiki, organized by their general creation time, so you can jump right into our backlog. Keep in mind, at this point the majority of the articles are basic filler pages, so there are only a few truly readable "articles." Any interesting articles containing more than a basic description will be marked with a "★". Featured Article 'Honkan Our first ever featured article is '''Honkan! A timid soul blessed with a heart of gold and endless tenacity, Honkan struggles to gain the respect of the City's eccentric residents. This page was chosen for being the first minor character page to be written into a more interesting article, instead of a basic summary. It was still a relatively small page, not yet containing enough information to be a complete article, but it had all currently available info on the character, making for a great introduction to one CITY's few do-gooders. Notice I've been writing in past tense. In preparation for its spotlight in the newsletter, new sections were added to the article, and Honkan joins the Mont Blanc Trio and Makabe Family as the CITY Wiki's third complete article! That isn't to say there's no more to be added in the future, but the page is now fully fleshed out with all currently available information, and organized for ease of reading. Come read about the City's newest police offifcer! New Pages This section lists all 40 of our current readable pages (pages under the Main namespace) in order of creation. Technical pages under the Categories, Templates, MediaWiki, Special, and CITY namespaces are not included here. As stated earlier, the majority of our best articles were written during the Summer of 2017, but many of the pages had already been created. Articles marked with a "★" are more developed than the other pages. However, this doesn't mean the other pages are devoid of information. Many of the basic pages have some interesting info, and we encourage you to check out the ones that look interesting. One more thing, in future newsletters, this section will list incomplete or disorganized pages that can be worked on immediately. Due to the volume of pages listed in this article and the fact that there is no information for the majority of them, we won't have a "To Do" list in this issue. However, the pages that can be worked on will be listed in the Tenkawa Times Job Listings, so check there if you want to help out! Editor's Note: Since many of the pages are essentially placeholders at this point, they are pretty simple in terms of style and have a lot jokes and overall silliness. Full articles will be encyclopedia-like and informative, and the current state of the pages does not represent how they will look in the future. We won't take ourselves too seriously, though, as CITY ''is ''a comedy manga. Winter 2016 (Basic Page Creation and Early Wiki Development) CITY Wiki ★CITY ★Midori Nagumo The City Ayumu Niikura Tatewaku Makabe Matsuri Makabe Spring 2017 (More Basic Pages and Finishing Basic Development) Tsurubishi Makabe ★Makabe Family ★Wako Izumi ★Honkan Makabe's Western Bistro Summer 2017 (Major Article Writing and Wiki Organization) ★Toudou ★Toudou's Shop CITY Volume 1 CITY Volume 2 ★Mont Blanc Trio ★MOB ★Arawi Keiichi September 2017 (Mass Basic Page Creation to Eleminate Red Links) ★Mrs. Makabe Obaba Kamui Tateshina ★Chessmaster Polka Dot Shirt Boy Sweater Girl Dress Girl ★NEW MOB Mont Blanc University The Town Mokumesei Manor Minami High School Minami Middle School CITY Manga Volume 3 Ecchan Riko Izumi Adatara ★Hajime Sakurai Tired Guy Nezumi Orikou ★Kamaboko Oni Category:Newsletter